


for the soul you're about to sell

by sickly _sweet (infectedsense)



Category: CKY, CKY (Band), HIM (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Cocaine, Drug Use, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pathos, Smoking, barely mentioned attraction, the 'ship is an afterthought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:05:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2141643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infectedsense/pseuds/sickly%20_sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ville sees the look on Deron’s face when he’s listening to his own music and that look is serenity.  There are myriad differences between the two of them, and this is just one of them.</i>
</p>
<p>Ville and Deron have a strange kind of friendship.  They sit in hotel rooms and insult each other's music and smoke.  Not a lot else happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the soul you're about to sell

**Author's Note:**

> 2006 repost from my Livejournal, sickly_sweet
> 
> Title is from the HIM song, Bleed Well.
> 
> More of a Ville character study than anything else.

Ville is writing lyrics again in the back of the car, or at least trying to, tight handwriting squirming over sheets of clean white paper, lines that don’t match up and too many smudges to count. He pulls on a partially crushed cigarette, feeling hot smoke down his throat and pushing against his chest until the exhale. The cars are all non-smoking these days but Ville always asks for the same driver because this guy doesn’t mind, he lets him do what he wants in the back and takes him to wherever he wants to go. Discretion has a price, just like everything else.

It’s better to meet in the middle of the city, where people don’t gossip in the way that they do in the suburbs. Ville has never understood this, how clean, normal neighbourhoods can be such a short drive away from the sprawling shimmer of Los Angeles, how this can only happen in America. The sun shines bright and he pulls his cap further down over his face, squeezing pen and cigarette tight in each hand. The inspiration is drying up now and he has a slow sinking feeling inside where the coke is wearing off, draining the euphoria, draining the comfort. Nobody ever thought to send him to rehab for that.

The hotel room is like Ville’s safe haven from Los Angeles. It’s a place where he doesn’t have to be happy and beautiful, but he can be human and broken and indulge his weaknesses without them feeling like sins, and everything that he says and does and is told has more honesty to it than he’ll get in a week anywhere else. The car crawls down busy streets until it reaches the right corner and slows to a stop. Ville gathers his things clumsily around himself and jerks the door open, finding a twenty dollar bill to press at the driver who only nods in return. It should cover the cost of removing the smell of smoke and the ash he’s been treading into the carpet.

It’s too hot outside and Ville is bundled up in layers of black but he walks determinedly, fighting against his growing fatigue and the various addiction itches gnawing at his stomach. He realises that he hasn’t eaten anything today and buys a bag of chips at a news stand, crunching through them until his throat half-seizes up without any water to wash them down with. He’s twitchy and for once wishing that he’d asked to be dropped right outside the hotel instead of three blocks away, but he doesn’t trust his driver quite that much.

He already has the key card in his back pocket, breezes through the foyer and straight into the elevator. It’s a nice hotel, they always are just in case he gets caught coming or going, this way he can always pretend interview or promo or something and only Seppo would know the lie but act like he didn’t as long as Ville is always wherever he needs to be and clean enough to perform. The elevator twitches up to the third floor and pings to a stop and he strides out, walking fast so that he doesn’t stumble or shake or fall down, eyes scanning along the doors on both sides until he finds the one, key card slides home and the handle turns easily.

Ville blinks when his own voice greets him, spilling in tinny tones from small speakers on top of the TV set, he takes this in as his eyes first sweep one side of the room and ignore the other until he can breathe in and close the door. Then his eyes find the bed and Deron sitting on it, all sunglasses and blond sitting and watching the door, waiting for Ville. They both nod at each other and that’s all.

Living in LA has turned Deron from pale to tan, and it’s not a look that suits him in Ville’s eyes. His hair is longer and wilder and his beard is careless now and he looks older and more solid but his old self still clings to him like disease, threaded all through him and drifting in clouds around him. They both have learned to show change on the outside. Ville fingers his own hair (longer than he would like it but the label dropped some heavy hints on that front), grateful that he has this half-day to himself so he can wear thick black make-up to cover the aged skin beneath his eyes, to distract from the blown pupils and the indifference there.

The air conditioner is switched on and humming low but the music rises above it in sweeps of sound, it’s ‘Cyanide Sun’ which means that Deron must have played the whole album before Ville got there. Ville goes to tear off his bulky coat and realises that he’s still holding the bag of chips, half empty now. He offers them to Deron, just for something to do, just because he needed to move, and Deron takes them for probably the same reason. Ville joins Deron on the bed in black jeans and shirt sleeves, lighting another cigarette that they share as the song finishes, passing it back and forth between two sets of long, calloused fingers, and every time that Ville inhales he thinks of Deron’s lips around the cigarette where his are now and has to force himself to take a drag.

The first thing that Deron says is “I can see what you were trying to do with that album”, and just like that he makes it worthless. Ville sighs heavy and deep and flops back on the bed, staring up at the cool white of the ceiling.

“Shit,” he says, closing his eyes. “You got anything to drink?”

“Always,” is the reply, and Ville injects more sadness into the word than is really there. He hears a bottle cap unscrewed, the clink of glass against teeth and the swallow, the slight smack as the mouth disengages, then the bottle nudges against his thigh and he sits up to drink. Deron always has Jack Daniels for him and he’s grateful for it because although he can handle it just fine, vodka isn’t really his thing.

Deron pushes himself up and crosses the room to the portable CD player that he carries everywhere in his car, and Ville notices that his feet are bare and that he’s wearing his _…And Justice For All_ shirt. The silence is split by unfamiliar music, but when the vocals kick in with a fractured scream Ville knows that it’s Deron’s scream, that this must be music from his side-project. The quality is rough and obviously unfinished but that isn’t the point of this. The mattress bounces as Deron sits back down and grabs the bottle of whiskey again.

The music makes Ville smile to himself, even more so when he realises that Deron is staring at him, waiting for his opinion like it actually matters. He shrugs and says, “I can hear the Death influence.”

Deron snorts and shoots back “I can hear the Sabbath influence all over your album,” which only makes Ville smile even wider and start to relax. He leans forward with his arms on his thighs and turns to Deron.

“It’s good. The vocals are distinctive. Anyone would know it was you singing. The drumming is a bit overdone at times, and the guitars…” He breaks off and Deron nudges him.

“What? Say it.”

“You need to get away from that octave pedal,” Ville smirks, and Deron slaps at his knee with annoyance.

“Fucker.”

It’s funny because Ville knows that Deron could give a fuck about his opinions, or really about anyone’s opinion that doesn’t match his own, but it’s like an obligation, a trade-off because Ville does need Deron’s approval in the same way that he needs it from everyone. Deron is ready to take the world on and force them to his side, and if it doesn’t work it’s still a victory for Deron because he has this unshakeable confidence in what he can create. Ville sees the look on Deron’s face when he’s listening to his own music and that look is serenity. There are myriad differences between the two of them, and this is just one of them.

Ville takes the whiskey from Deron’s loose grip and takes a few burning swallows. “Tell me more about my album,” he says amiably, knocking knees with Deron, who smiles.

“It’s actually pretty good. For a HIM album,” he adds with a grin, then picks up his cigarettes from the floor and lights another one. “The music is heavier, definitely, but the vocals are still catchy. I think the fans will really go for it.”

“What about you?” Ville asks. Deron hesitates, drawing on his cigarette then turning away to look out of the window at the people on the streets below. Finally he turns back to Ville, sunglasses hiding his eyes but a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and Ville knows anyway, feels his stomach drop.

“It’s not a metal album Ville, and you know it.”

Ville Valo has dozens, well, hundreds of thousands of people telling him how wonderful he is on a daily basis. Everywhere that he turns he is surrounded by a sea of sycophants who shit out praise twenty four hours a day and he’s heard so many stories of how his music has “literally” saved people’s lives, but now Deron Miller sits here in a random hotel room and slices cleanly and deeply into him with just a few words, one sentence that could have been a death sentence, it makes Ville sigh with relief and the high is almost like a coke high. There’s a quote on the back of a Type O Negative album that reads ‘better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not’, and Ville craves approval but he wants to have _earned_ it first.

“I do know,” he admits, then smiles with more sincerity and warmth than he has in probably weeks. “Thank you for being honest about it.”

Deron just shrugs and looks away. “What else could I say?”

Ville never feels more like a musician than when he is with Deron. His writing process is isolated and it’s hard for him to find focus like that, working so closely, writing songs purely for himself, masturbatory lyrics and music that mimics while it pretends to create. In his position it’s impossible to find a middle ground between adoration, sincere or otherwise, and mindless hatred, but Deron is that middle ground.

“The lyrics,” Deron’s voice cuts through Ville’s thoughts unexpectedly and makes him realise that he’s slightly drunk. He steals the cigarette from Deron’s fingers again and holds the smoke in deep, the taste of American-branded tar heavy on his tongue. Deron slips the sunglasses from his face and his eyes look the way that they always do, like puddles of rainwater frozen over, they burn like ice. “The lyrics are really intense. They’re—” his speech breaks again and Ville needs to hear the next word, to know it, and when it comes, the word is “painful”, Deron’s eyes still burning into his. It hits him in the chest and he pulls on the cigarette again, chasing the smoke downwards with whiskey.

It’s truly ridiculous of Ville to envy Deron, but he does. They were born in the same year and Ville can’t help but feel like he could have had Deron’s life if things had been different, if he had been stronger in some ways and weaker in others. Ville has always wanted to be married and have children and he has never wanted to be a mainstream success but he is weak where Deron is strong and strong where Deron is weak and if he were more like Deron he could have been happier than he is right now.

Being with Deron is a place where redemption feels possible for Ville, something that he can breathe in and taste on the way down. Trying to kiss him is an afterthought, something that really didn’t need to be done, and on him the whiskey and cigarettes taste like failure, regret. Deron pushes Ville away and replaces his sunglasses, drags the back of his hand slowly over his mouth and turns away. Ville fumbles in his pockets and takes a hit of coke, tiny vial and silver spoon rattling against his fingers but it doesn’t spill. It’s very pure stuff and it’s subtle but it takes away the sting of rejection, smoothes out the rough edges of his thoughts and feelings and it strengthens him but it numbs him and when it fully hits his hands stop shaking. Deron doesn’t punch him but Deron doesn’t say anything either and Ville knows that he’s broken something between them, that this could be the last time they will ever meet like this now and he’s not sure that he’s ready for it. The thought makes him want to do another bump but he doesn’t, just watches Deron drink some more whiskey and smoke another cigarette, Ville just sits back and watches these addictions playing out before his eyes and within his head.

Maybe he’s already learned all that he can about himself from Deron and it doesn’t feel like anything much, nothing has changed because of him. But Ville is getting closer to writing the album that he has always wanted to, an album that is sharp and deep and dark and mostly real, and that does feel like something, because he’s not sure but he thinks that Deron is getting closer, too.


End file.
